


When it Happens to You

by GoldStarGrl



Category: Silicon Valley (TV)
Genre: Birthday, Canonical Character Death, Depression, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-01
Updated: 2016-08-01
Packaged: 2018-07-28 17:02:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,308
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7649179
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/GoldStarGrl/pseuds/GoldStarGrl
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Peter's birthday is a difficult day for Gavin.</p>
            </blockquote>





	When it Happens to You

**Year One**

He wakes up thirteen minutes before his alarm clock goes, and spends ten of those minutes wondering why. Then he picks up his Hooli phone where it’s plugged into his specially designed nightstand, and sees the date.

September 21st. The only birthday he remembers besides his own and his mother’s. Peter would have been forty-eight, a fossil in Silicon Valley. Not like Gavin was faring much better at forty-six.

He doesn’t move, even after his alarm goes off, beeping with increased volume and frequency. He just lies there, trying to modulate his breathing, the speed of his heartbeat. He touches his bracelet with his left hand, twisting the elastic around his fingers. A lot of websites thought it was some West Coast fashion statement, his bracelet. A rumor he was happy to perpetuate - it was actually a string of worry beads, tied thrice around his wrist. The only person who knew that was Denpok. Denpok and Peter.

He rolled a bead back and forth on the pads of his thumb and index finger until he felt level enough to get up. He had a company to run, a lawsuit to win against an insolent teenager, a world to conquer and improve.

He keeps himself busy until nearly ten at night, making Patrice and Denpok and the entire Nucleus department stay late, just so he has people to talk to, work to focus on, a whole room of distractions. Nobody mentions Peter. Of course they don’t, his funeral was months ago, why would they remember his birthday?

He barely lets go of his bracelet all day.

 

**Year Two**

He’s prepared this year, books a trip to Nepal a month in advance so he doesn’t have to spent September 21st in the city where it all happened, where they both became them. It’s freezing, and the only person he talks to for three days is Denpok, to complain about the cold and to arrange Gavin silent meditation sessions with some of the country's’ top lamas and monks.

He can’t keep his mind blank for more than thirty seconds. The thoughts keep creeping back up the sides of his skull, forcing their way back into his consciousness. He tries incense so strong it makes him dizzy. He takes a long, scalding hot bath that somehow rachets up the tension in his shoulders. He tries imported peyote that gives him nightmares. He tries masturbating, a last ditch solution he avoids whenever possible, but he still can’t clear his head.

He doesn't eat after throwing up a bowl of rice hours after landing. He blames jetlag. Denpok pretends to believe him.

 

**Year Three**

_The first time they had sex - the first time either of them had had sex_ ever _\- they lay awake talking until four AM, despite the mellow, gelatinous feeling of their bones tempting them into rest._

_“Do you think we’ll still matter, when we’re fifty?” He’d asked, running his thumb up and down the back of Peter’s palm. “That what we’re building here is going to last?”_

_Peter blinked, considering this. “That’s twenty-six years away.”_

_“Hey, twenty-eight years for me, old man.” Gavin teased. Peter was still thinking, his dark hair mussed and falling in his eyes. He never noticed when he needed a haircut._

_“At this point, it would be nothing but speculation.”_

_“Then speculate.”_

_Peter extended his arm, stretching out against the mattress, leaving room for Gavin to cling closer to his side, lay his head on Peter’s chest. “I think so.”_

When Gavin Hoolis himself that morning, #PeterGregorys50th and #RememberAGreat pop up. They’re both trending on Twitter in the Palo Alto area that morning. Half the articles attached to the tweets mention him, their pointless, endless feud.

He locks the doors to his office and types out a series of tweets about the disgusting entitlement of the media to other people’s lives that the intern in charge of monitoring employee social media catches and calls Patrice and Denpok, who stop him from sending just in time.

He almost calls Peter’s mother, now in a nursing home outside San Dimas. He almost calls a prostitute. Instead he calls Richard Hendriks.

 

**Year Four**

He can’t do it this year. It’s been nearly half a decade and it’s not getting easier. He screams at a nineteen-year-old engineer he’s fairly confident has Aspergers for getting in the same elevator as him and later throws his kale smoothie at the wall of his office for being too chunky. Denpok follows him up to the roof and leads him in some breathing exercises for almost an hour.

It occurs to him he hasn’t been emailed or called or scheduled for a meeting all day. The board or his assistant or perhaps Denpok all conspired to clear his schedule, they knew he would be off today.

Everyone knows. Everyone can tell, what he and Peter were. They can see how weak and pathetic Gavin Belson is because he misses his fucking dead ex-boyfriend.

He misses him. He misses Peter.

He tugs at his bracelet so hard it snaps, beads flying everywhere, a few off the ledge and into the street. He almost bursts into tears. Instead he growls into the intercom that someone better bring him cruelty-free poached eggs in the next twenty minutes or the entire Hooli kitchen staff is fired.

He can’t do this. He can’t do this. He can’t do this.

 

**Year Five**

He sits in his garage, fiddling with a pen. A real, actual pen, with ink and a button you can click on the end of it. His garage is climate controlled, with power-washed white walls and floor, holding two Teslas he never seems to find the time to drive. It’s nothing like Peter’s parents’ garage, where they crammed a workbench in next to old camping equipment and his mom’s VW station wagon. His heart still pulses in his throat as he sits there, on an overturned bucket one of his landscaping crew uses to collect leaves in the fall. He doesn’t move, though. He owes it to himself not to move.

It’s hard to write with his hands, he hasn’t done it in so long. The muscles and tendons in his hand flex under the dark green rows of his bracelet. Richard picked it out for him when they were in Greece for a Tech and the Economy summit in July.

_Pete,_

_I asked you once if you thought we’d still matter when we turned fifty. You did. The internet threw a damn digital parade in your memory, a billion words on how much you changed the world. How much we changed the world together._

_I’m fifty now. Jesus, I know. I didn’t have a trending tag or MIT students writing testimonials on their blogs about how I inspired them to go into technical engineering. It’s harder to keep a legacy tarnish free when you’re still around to create it._

_I’m still making the world a better place, though. I’m doing the best I can considering the shitstorm you left me with, you fucker. But I am._

_I miss you. Every day, but exceedingly so on this one._

_Happy 52nd._

He doesn’t even read what he’s gotten down, too scared to see proof of his thoughts and feelings printed down in hard copy like that. He folds the paper into eighths and walks outside, all the way to the edge of his property, where he had a landscaper install a serenity pool, a false pond full of orange and white koi fish, surrounded by a ring of smooth, oval stones.

He drops the letter into the water. After a few seconds, it’s lost in the darker depths. After that, it’ll soften enough to dissolve. Gavin’s not sure how long that takes. Peter would know. Richard might.

  
He blinks hard and goes inside to get ready for work.

**Author's Note:**

> As always, I'm halleregina and hgedits on tumblr. Hit me up.


End file.
